Has ancestry testing thrown up any surprises?The Seaconke Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts is one of the few I know of that have used genetic-ancestry testing. They found they had all this African and European genetic lineage mixed in. However, I think anybody who knows Native American history would not be surprised at the way their DNA test results came out. Native people in that part of the country have been intermarrying with descendants of European and African people since the 1600s. What that shows me is that being a member of a Native American tribe cannot be seen as totally biological.

There's been a lot of interest in trying to trace the migration of people into the Americas. Why has that been so controversial?I think there is a suspicion by many Native Americans that scientists, who are largely not Native American, want to turn our history into another immigrant narrative that says "We're all really immigrants, we're all equal, you have no special claims to anything."

There are also traditional people who don't want to have a molecular narrative of history shoved down their throats. They would prefer to privilege the tribal creation stories that root us in the landscapes we come from.

Given recent insights about the extent of genetic mixing between different groups, do tribes still matter?I think we need to stop conflating the concept of a tribe with a racial group. I and many of my relatives have non-native fathers, yet we have a strong sense of being Dakota because we were raised within an extended Dakota kin group. We have a particular cultural identity, based in a land that we hold to be sacred. That's what gives our lives meaning. It's what makes us who we are.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Tribal genetics"

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Kim Tallbear is an anthropologist at the University of Texas, Austin. She is a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, part of the Santee Dakota people in South Dakota. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science (University of Minnesota Press)

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"People think there is a DNA test to prove you are Native American. There isn't" (Image: Julia Robinson for New Scientist)